


I'll smile to hide the truth

by BriaMaria



Series: Divide [4]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Read the notes!, ehhhh don't know what to tag this, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-05 21:53:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10317779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BriaMaria/pseuds/BriaMaria
Summary: You were lost in each other, absolutely lost. The world could be burning around you and neither of you would notice. You stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and he spun you around as if you were two five year olds trying to dance for the first time. You dipped under his long arms and he twirled and you were both listening to music that no one else could hear.It didn’t matter that no one else could hear, because only the two of you existed in that moment. I didn’t exist. The memory of me didn’t exist. It was just giggles and shy glances and the night that wrapped around you and kept your love in its careful hands.And then he kissed you, right there, just on the edge of the soft yellow glow of the streetlamp and your fingers dug into his long dark curls and your feet went up on tiptoes so that your body pressed into every centimeter of his and you held onto him in a way that spoke promises of never letting go.--Or the "Happier" AU that finds Louis' ex running into him and Harry as a couple





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! So this is the little Happier drabble that might not be to everyone's taste. It's told from an outside POV, so there's that. But it is about Harry and Louis. (I just couldn't write about them breaking up. Ever.) Oh in case it isn't obvious, Louis is the "you", Harry is the "he" and the ex is the narrator. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, and if you want to check out the rest of the divide series, please do and let me know what you think :) I have vague plots for Save myself, What do I know, and Bibi Ye Ye in my head for the next long one (20K+) if anyone wants to weigh in. 
> 
> All my love!

The first time I saw you after we broke up he wasn’t with you.

It’s funny how small this town becomes when you want to avoid someone. I hurt you, I know I did. I loved you, I know I did. Maybe you loved me and maybe you hurt me and maybe it was both our faults but it still feels like mine too often. So when I saw you I really wanted to duck into the nearest shop and avoid those eyes -- those blue, blue eyes -- that I knew you would keep so blank and empty when you looked into mine. It used to be I could read all your secrets in your eyes.

Maybe I still can, a bit. Because I saw there was something different about you. It was in the way your body was pliant and loose again when it had been nothing but taut and tense when we were together. It was in the way you smiled and it meant something even though I thought your heart was still broken. It was in the way you got a bit dreamy when I asked what was new with you.

I’m glad you didn’t answer, really. I didn’t want to respond. I didn’t want you to know my life now amounted to sitting in dark rooms in nothing but my stretched out pants drinking shitty beer and listening to songs that reminded me of times when you smiled like that at me.

A car honked or a baby cried or something caught your attention and you glanced at your watch. I wondered even then if you were late to meet him. Whoever him was. I didn’t have a face at the time, but with how you rushed off with a “let’s get drinks sometime” tossed over your delicate shoulder I knew. I knew there was a him.

I hated you because of it. I hated myself more.

***

The next time I saw you, you were with him.

You were walking down 29th and Park and you didn’t even see me. I saw you, though. Your hips caught my eyes first, as they always had. OK, your arse. It’s a thing of beauty, a thing to worship. Did I let you know that? Probably not. Probably you thought I no longer snuck glances as you stepped out of the shower, fog and mist clinging to your curves like some kind of fucking painting. Maybe you thought I was just brushing my teeth and plucking the random odd hair out of my nose, but I always watched.

But it wasn’t mine to watch anymore, your body, your arse, your waist. It was his. And he was making that known. He loved touching you. His fingers lingered in all your soft spots, loving and possessive. Your elbow, your jaw, a quick swipe over your lips as you laughed up into his eyes. Your smile was so goddamn big. Did it hurt to smile that much? Because it hurt me.

You were lost in each other, absolutely lost. The world could be burning around you and neither of you would notice. You stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and he spun you around as if you were two five year olds trying to dance for the first time. You dipped under his long arms and he twirled and you were both listening to music that no one else could hear.

It didn’t matter that no one else could hear, because only the two of you existed in that moment. I didn’t exist. The memory of me didn’t exist. It was just giggles and shy glances and the night that wrapped around you and kept your love in its careful hands.

And then he kissed you, right there, just on the edge of the soft yellow glow of the streetlamp and your fingers dug into his long dark curls and your feet went up on tiptoes so that your body pressed into every centimeter of his and you held onto him in a way that spoke promises of never letting go.

Had we ever made such silent vows to each other? Seeing you with him I knew we hadn’t. There had been passionate snogs and quick familiar pecks and sloppy drunk panting into each other’s mouths, but this. This was forever. This was souls tangling. This was …

This time I ducked into the pub so I couldn’t see you anymore.

***

The third time, I didn’t see you at first but you saw me. You always were a better person than me, because you didn’t try to hide.

Or maybe you’re not a better person because you were with him and I was alone in the fucking bedding department of the store holding a single spatula and if that didn’t sum up my existence I don’t know what would.

It was the first time I got a good look at him -- Harry, you informed me and he repeated in some slow molasses voice as he shook my hand with the one that wasn’t clasped around your waist. He was gorgeous of course. His jawline was sculpted from marble, his eyes the color of damp forest moss, his body long and lean.

But what made him really beautiful is the way he looked at you. You talked about your job and some of our friends and the way you included him in the stories hurt. You touched his chest and his shoulder and his arm when you wanted to make a point or just keep him involved.

Remember how we would separate at parties? It was almost like we were relieved to have space between our bodies, to have space to tell our own stories instead of being apart of each others’. That’s not how you were with Harry. He fit into your stories better than I ever could have.

Come grab a pint this weekend, you told me. The bitterness that should have been there, wasn’t. You had moved on. I should be happy about that, because I was the one who hurt you. But I wanted you to still hurt, because then I would know a little piece, even just the smallest fraction, of you was still mine.

It wasn’t, though. You were gone. You were his. You were were happier.

I said yes, because I couldn’t say no.

***

The first time we fought I should have known. The person you love needs to be someone you can fight with, and that wasn’t us. We tore each other apart. Words became vicious claw marks on vulnerable skin and one of us was always left bleeding. Too often it was you.

I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry for the way you became in the end. I could see it happening, but like an oncoming train I had felt powerless to stop it. The spark that had been the very essence of you was being smothered by the way we had grown apart but refused to admit it. You had always shined like a star, bright, radiant, bubbly … effervescent.

When I had first caught you, first touched you, I thought I was touching magic. The way your skin shimmered against my fingertips was like nothing I’d seen in this world. But that glow dimmed with each night I didn’t make it home, or with each missed phone call I’d promised, or each date I blew off.

It was back. That glow. That light. It was back because of him.

We were at the pub, you and me and him and two or three of our friends depending on the hour. They cycled through and babbled at Harry with the grace of love-struck 11-year-olds. I didn’t blame them. There’s something about him. Which you know. Obviously. But the quiet charm that radiates off him in waves that roll along and crash into everyone around him is intoxicating.

He doesn’t seem to notice, because all he notices is you. His eyes are on you the whole night. He watches the way you move, the way you flirt with the bartender, and he knows it’s harmless. Not like me who thought you were fucking anyone you talked to. He watches the way you swallow, his eyes locked on your Adam’s Apple as it bobs. He watches the way the light caresses your caramel skin.

And you watch him. You were always the sprite, the puck, the life of the party and you still are. But there was something about the way you kept him in your eyesight, the way you checked in even if it was just with a glance of fingers against skin, the way you pressed your back against his chest even as you listened intently to someone else’s story. Your bodies pulled toward each other like magnates.

We were never magnates.

Did I ever pay attention to you like that? Like you were the center of my universe, my sun, my stars, my moon. That’s how Harry looked at you. Even when you called him a curly haired cunt, he looked at you like that.

I found the corner of the room, shrouded in shadows, and nursed my empty bottle. A friend came over, laying a gentle hand on my shoulder. “One day you’ll feel it too,” she said, condolence in her voice. She saw what I saw.

It was then he said something to make you laugh. That giggle that you never seemed to want to let escape, but that transformed your face into a work of art. The back of your hand covered your mouth and he pulled it away just so he could see you in all your beauty. He smiled just because you were smiling. What had he said to make you look like that? Why could I not make you look like that anymore?

***

The next time I saw Harry he wasn’t with you.

It was some industry event and there was champagne and models and superficial chatter. And Harry.

Fucking Harry.

I would have avoided him, because you know me. I was at the point where I hated him mostly, admired him a little, and was just a tiny bit thankful for his existence. It was much too complicated for us to bond over at 3 in the fucking morning, both sloshed and dressed too formally for deep conversations.

But he tried anyway, because he’s fucking Harry.

Hey man, he said in that drawl of his that I guessed you loved but grated on every single one of my nerves. How did that work? Because you talked so fast, were practically vibrating with the energy that coursed through your bloodstream, and here was this man. Slow, deliberate, thoughtful. Maybe that’s why it worked. Maybe we talked too fast, you and me. Maybe we talked past each other.

Hey, I said back, because I had to. Not because I wanted to. What I wanted to do was crawl home and strip and listen to sad songs in the dark again. Because I think I loved you. Even if I didn’t love you like he did.

He made small talk, though, and I made small talk and I tried not to punch him in the face. Maybe you’d be proud of me for once.

I’m glad … uh … I’m glad you and Lou can be friends, he said eventually when the silence between our pointless questions dwindled to awkwardness.

Yeah. It was the only thing I could get out. We weren’t friends We had never been friends. How could he understand that when clearly you two were the best of friends.

He speaks fondly of you, Harry said. I don’t believe it, because what would you have said? He made me sad all the time? He drank too much? Partied too much? Didn’t show up when he was supposed to?

You two seem happy, is all I said. Because you do. So much happier than we had ever been. Even in the beginning.

His face lit at that. Actually lit like a fucking candle or a fucking sunbeam or a fucking firefly.

We are.

It was all he had to say. It was all that needed to be said. Because you were. You were fucking happy.

***

The last time I saw you before I moved to America was on your wedding day. You had invited me because somehow Harry and I were now friends. And he told you to, and you couldn’t say no to him.

Maybe we were still a bit hesitant around each other, you and me. Maybe there were times when an off-hand joke brought up the resentment that had turned our relationship sour in the first place. But then you would just touch Harry. Just touch him. And you would be fine. As if that little bit of contact could ground you entirely.

You did it now, but not because of me. You were nervous because you were on display in front of all your guests in some kind of magic suit that hugged all your curves but managed to look sharp at the edges at the same time. Your hair was styled to show off your eyes. I wondered what I would be able to see in them.

Harry was gorgeous as always, in all black, his sheer shirt unbuttoned almost to his navel. I used to make snide comments about it, but now I find it endearing. Because everything about the kid is endearing.

Your fingers grazed the soft part of his wrist, the way you do when you’re anxious and you want to find your center. You never did that with me.

Harry, mindless of all the guests watching him, took your hands in his, pressed them to his heart, to his cheeks, to his lips. Reassuring you both that this is yours, for no one else to have.

The officiant paused, but neither of you cared. As ever, you’re in your own world, and I take a second to imagine myself up there. It wouldn’t be the same. I wouldn’t have taken your hands to press them against my heart, my cheeks, my lips. I wouldn’t have touched my forehead to yours. My voice wouldn’t have broken when I promised to give up everything if only you asked me to.

Maybe we could have worked. If I had been a little more careful and you had been a little less … just less. But then you wouldn’t smile the way you were doing. The kind of smile that crinkled your eyes and took over your face. That smile was twice as big as any one of ours.

So I stopped picturing us. And started picturing a maybe. Maybe one day I would find what you two have. Maybe one day I would be walking down the street wrapped in someone’s arms, only able to see them and nothing else. Maybe one day I would find someone who spun me around in the middle of a crowded street because they loved me too much to contain their joy. Maybe someday I would find someone who made me smile like Harry makes you smile.

Until then, I can finally just be happy. Happy that you’re happy.


End file.
